The Give 'Em Hill Tour, First Lady Doing More Than Listening As She Travels State

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls her summer of travel a "listening tour" to learn about New York's problems. But it's also a choreographed positioning tour, the first step in defining herself for her Senate campaign...
"She's trying to redefine herself well before the campaign gets under way," said Mitchell Moss, director of the Traub Urban Research Center at New York University. "This is an effort to establish a new identity that is to some degree independent of her husband and independent of her past."...
Adds Philip Klinkner, a political science professor at Hamilton College, "She has always been seen through the prism of her husband or through some ideological lens. For the first time, voters have a chance to size her up...unfiltered. It's the 'Hillary unplugged' tour."